The present invention relates to a smoking pipe and, more particularly, to a smoking pipe having improved smoking characteristics.
Most smoking pipes in common use today generally include a bowl into which pipe tobacco is placed and a stem in communication with a breather hole located at or near the bottom of the bowl. As the tobacco is ignited and the user draws on the stem to establish and to support combustion of the tobacco, the combustion takes place in a top-to-bottom fashion with the smoke produced by the combustion process being drawn through the breather hole and the stem and discharged to the outside environs. The production of ashes also takes place in a top-to-bottom fashion during normal use of the pipe.
While pipes of the above general type have been in widespread use for many years and found generally acceptable to the pipe smoking public, there are certain shortcomings and disadvantages to these pipes. For instance, the user of such a pipe must be sure to establish and maintain a sufficient draw to support continous combustion of the tobacco and to achieve a satisfactory volume of smoke, that is, to overcome the fact that the breather hole is physically obstructed by the presence of tobacco. Thus, the user must be continuously attentive to the smoking process to prevent the pipe from extinguishing, often a disconcerting annoyance. Further, if during smoking of the pipe or upon completion of smoking one pipe full of tobacco the user wishes to add more tobacco to the pipe, he must engage in the time-consuming process of extinguishing the pipe by removing all of the existing ashes (being careful not to get burned in the process), reloading the pipe with new tobacco, and re-igniting the pipe. Repetition of the abovedescribed pipe-smoking process over an extended period of time can have the further undesirable effect of causing tobacco juices to accummulate, or "puddle," at the bottom of the bowl adjacent to the breather hole with the result that filters must be used to remove these juices if they are drawn into the stem or the pipe must otherwise be permitted to "dry out" before reusing. The continued use of a pipe in which juices accummulate can, in any event, lead to a harsh, bitter or otherwise unpleasant taste experience on the part of the user. This latter reason is a common reason why most serious pipe smokers ordinarily have several pipes among which they can choose to achieve satisfactory smoking experiences.
An additional disadvantage of pipes as described above is that such pipes must be ignited from the top, thereby requiring the user to "fight" the natural tendency of the flame from matches or lighters to be directed upwardly (except in cases of special pipe lighters) rather than toward the tobacco. This latter problem is most annoying or frustrating in attempts to light pipes out-of-doors in the presence of winds or rain. A further disadvantage of pipes as described above is that the user must be very careful in the physical handling of the pipe, for example, by the expeditious use of ashtrays and the like, to prevent ashes from falling out of the pipe and causing damage or messing nearby areas. This problem is most common in the case of pipes having bowls of rounded or other physically unstable shapes which require the user to be especially careful in the handling and placement of the pipes.